Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
I hope so. I hope I’m wrong. But the logistics involved do not seem promising. The technology isn’t ready for large scale carbon capture. And the production and materials needed to build it will still use carbon. It’s a carbon conundrum. Geoengineering might buy us time, but growth economies must be dismantled or the problems will persist into the future. This article explains the situation we’re in.
We certainly have challenging times ahead, regardless of how things go. No question about that one.
Even rolling out some ideal, sci fi solution today, we have still done some damage that will take time to repair. Heat absorbed by the ocean has built up for years and can only leave so quickly.
I do think a mixed economy can control its growth in a sustainable way, though. Not all economic value needs to be derived heavily from carbon-producing industries. Service economies can create value at a much reduced environmental cost, though their increasing wealth does often come with its own, new threats to the environment.
It’s threading a needle, no question about it. But I do think it’s within the realm of actual possibility. Where I’m not sure a fully planned and actually well-functioning economy really is. For political reasons, if not practical.
How about a steady-state economy?
I love it in theory, particularly as our data-processing continues to advance. In practice I think it’d be impossible to implement in my country (US) any time this century without a whole lot of blood in the streets, and a very high likelihood of the attempt failing due to corruption and sabotage, and resulting in a dramatic, reactionary shift in the country’s direction to the far right.
In the future though, as our tools improve and attitudes toward tech change, something like this could become feasible. You’d have to deal with modern population decline via immigration, which is naturally unsustainable, but that bridge can be crossed in the future.